ABSTRACT The first reported dinosaur discovery within the borders of Colorado was found during Ferdinand V. Hayden’s U.S. Government sponsored survey to explore the Territories of Colorado and New Mexico. In 1869 the survey team brought back to Washington D.C. a broken caudal vertebral bone collected in the high Rocky Mountains. The bone was given to Joseph Leidy Professor of Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania who noted the fossil’s shared similarity to early dinosaur discoveries previously made in France and England. He formally named the fossil dinosaur; Antrodemus valens. Despite being the first dinosaur discovery within the borders of Colorado, the occurrence of this fossil fell into obscurity, as by the twentieth century paleontologists had recognized that the fossilized bone was of the better known theropod dinosaur Allosaurus. In the 150 years since, this mountainous region of Colorado has yielded few discoveries of dinosaurs and the location of this obscure initial discovery has remained a geological mystery. This paper reviews the available archival evidence regarding the events leading to the discovery of Colorado’s first dinosaur in an attempt to relocate its original discovery site.

ABSTRACT Born in Geneva in 1857, Albert Brun studied pharmacy before going on to mineralogy. He was a member of many scientific societies and carried out extensive research in mineralogy and volcanology alongside his career as a pharmacist. His numerous articles and other communications shed light both on his varied interests and the development of the Earth Sciences at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was particularly interested in ‘volcanic exhalations’, the gasses released by volcanoes, and devoted much of his spare time to collecting and analyzing them. A large part of his collection of rocks and minerals is now housed in the Natural History Museum of Geneva.

ABSTRACT This paper describes the work of Clara Ehrenberg (1838–1915), especially her engagement in the curation of one of the most scientifically important early microbiological/micropalaeontological collections in the world, now located at the Museum für Naturkunde zu Berlin. Her meticulous work with very fragile microscopic slides, as well as accomplishments in the field of curation and taxonomy, and her detailed observations and fine drawings, are acknowledged here. Furthermore, it is shown how Clara, in her autobiography, drew attention to her family and to her father’s (C. G. Ehrenberg, 1795–1876) life, which was embedded in the Berlin university realm of the time. The descriptions in her memoirs are by far more wide reaching than just personal. Clara Ehrenberg was a close observer of the constantly changing world, a process which accelerated dramatically in the rapidly expanding city of Berlin and had, due to nineteenth century industrial inventions and progress, an impact on the daily lives of her family and her contemporaries with consequences lasting to our own time.

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Marianne Klemun, Donald Goldstein, Kristan Cockerill, John Diemer; Letters from the President, Treasurer, Secretary and Editor's Introduction. Earth Sciences History 1 January 2023; 42 (1): ii–iv. doi: https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6187-42.1.i Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

ABSTRACT Over the last three-quarters of a century various grain-based classification systems have been developed in order to categorize sandstones on the basis of the relative abundances of their three most common components: quartz, feldspar, and rock fragments. A review of the historical development of sandstone classification is undertaken to elucidate evolution in geological understanding represented by various methodologies of classification. The compositional fields defined in traditional sandstone classifications are found to be largely incompatible with subpopulations of sandstones grouped according to interpreted sedimentary tectonic provenance. The origin of this incompatibility between descriptive classifications and genetic classifications arose from the fact that neither approach established classification field boundaries on the basis of processes known to control the origin and evolution of sandstone composition. The development of the study of a range of factors that influence sandstone petrogenesis and grain composition are reviewed along with the introduction of several critical statistical techniques applicable to multicomponent grain abundance analysis. From the understandings gained by the evaluation of these advances in classification practice a set of potential topics for future consideration are introduced.

ABSTRACT Profitable gold mining began in the United States with the accidental discovery in 1799 of a seventeen-pound gold nugget in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. North Carolina’s gold production peaked between the 1830s and 1840s as hundreds of mines contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the national economy, necessitating the 1837 construction of a federal Branch Mint in Charlotte to process Piedmont gold. Gold mining suffered a major decline in North Carolina after the discovery of the richer and more extensive gold deposits in California in 1848. However, the North Carolina gold miners who did not join the western rush continued to work the shafts of the Piedmont using increasingly sophisticated European and South American technology, as well as new innovations such as hydraulic mining techniques from California, until the advent of the Civil War. From the end of Reconstruction (1877) to 1920, gold mining in North Carolina was sporadic and often funded by outside investors or used as a ruse in gold and stock scams. Copper mining, with gold and silver as secondary products, using increasingly complex technology and associated environmental issues, drove most of the mining fervor during this period. Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, gold production slowly increased until the Second World War, but never became a major industry as they were out-competed by the more profitable gold fields in the western United States, Alaska, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. From the 1970s to today, dependent upon the price of gold in the market and the requirements of environmental regulation, prior mining districts in North (and South) Carolina have continued to be examined, explored and cautiously mined using cyanide heap leach techniques. Although few in number, these limited lease mining projects have extracted over two million troy ounces of gold and nearly a million troy ounces of silver by 2010. Future extraction by the ongoing Haile Mine (South Carolina) project will increase this amount substantially in the next decade. Nevertheless, Cabarrus County continues to hold the world’s record for producing the greatest number of large (a pound or more) gold nuggets and was the epicenter of North America’s first gold rush.

ABSTRACT This is the second essay of a two-part series on the life and collecting activities of Albert Koch. After Koch traveled to England where he sold his Missourium to the British Museum, the American mastodon that now stands in the Natural History Museum of London, he then went to his homeland in Germany. Koch left his family in Dresden, when he again departed for the United States to pursue some additional paleontological adventures. Following several weeks of travel, he arrived in Alabama where he excavated the remains of a large, archaeocete whale, that he named the Hydrarchos. Koch displayed the skeleton in New York, and several other eastern cities before taking it to Europe. When in Berlin, Koch was able to sell the skeleton to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia who placed it in the Royal Museum. Soon thereafter, Koch returned to the United States and Alabama to discover a second whale skeleton. He took this skeleton to Europe where it was exhibited in several cities but, having received no offers, Koch returned with his second Hydrarchos to the United States where it was initially displayed in New Orleans, then St. Louis, and eventually Chicago. In his later years, Koch turned his attention to the Academy of Science of St. Louis where he became an active member and curator, as well as a prospector for minerals. This essay examines the final chapters of Koch’s life and his entrepreneurial showmanship tendencies versus contributions he may have made to science. This narrative is a sequel to an article published in Volume 41 Number 2 of Earth Sciences History that focused on Albert Koch’s Missourium. Together, the two essays capture the life and career of Albert C. Koch.

ABSTRACT This paper is dedicated to Andrey Borisovich Vistelius for his contribution to the development of the mathematical geosciences and to his formulation of the term ‘mathematical geology’. The mathematical geosciences as a scientific subdiscipline were independently developed in several countries. J. C. Griffiths, W. C. Krumbein, and A. B. Vistelius are the most commonly recognized founders of mathematical geology. The term ‘mathematical geology’ is generally attributed to Vistelius. He began applying mathematical algorithms to solve practical geological problems in the 1940s. This new discipline was explicitly defined in his standard work Principles of Mathematical Geology published in Russian in 1980 and translated into English in 1992. Vistelius’ definition is focused on two main aspects: (1) Mathematical models developed and applied in geology in a broad sense must be conceptual, that is, they must be based on geoscientific ideas of the studied object; (2) Suitable mathematical models have to be probabilistic because most geological properties and events show a stochastic character. Modern definitions of the term ‘mathematical geosciences’ remain similar to Vistelius’ version.

ABSTRACT In the summer of 1838, Arnold Guyot was asked by Louis Agassiz to gather information on Alpine glaciers, with the aim of reporting their findings in September, at the annual gathering of the French Geological Society. Guyot’s observations of the internal structure of the ice and interpretations on glacier movements, reported orally at the conference, were new to science. Unfortunately, because of purported illness, Guyot did not send his manuscript to be published and missed his first opportunity to be recognized as a pioneer in glacier studies. During the years 1841 to 1847, Guyot published a series of notes, detailing results of his field work in tracing erratic blocks in the central Alpine region, in the Alpine foreland and in the Jura Mountains. The level of detail in his work was unprecedented and has not been replicated since. Recognizing that erratic blocks of similar lithology could be followed along organized paths of deposition, Guyot could invalidate those theories that sought to explain their deposition by chaotic means, such as floods, debacles or drifting icebergs loaded with rock debris. Only moraines, composed of material transported by glaciers, could explain the mapped arrangements of erratic blocks. Geological proofs for extensive glaciations in central Europe had just been found, and Guyot could demonstrate them on his hand-drawn map. But, in 1848, a revolution broke out in Neuchâtel. The local academy where Guyot was engaged as a professor shut down and all staff were left without pay. Answering a call from Agassiz who had emigrated to the USA in 1846, Guyot departed Switzerland and joined his friend there in the fall of 1848. In his luggage were all the papers on his unfinished project, including his map, and a full collection of erratic rock specimens. After arrival in the USA, Guyot had to begin a new professional life and could not devote significant attention to the subject of erratic blocks. In 1849, he showed his map of the erratic basins of Switzerland and discussed his results with various members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); he also shared his novel ideas about the climatic conditions required for the formation of large glaciers; however, he did not formally publish the results of his work in the Alps, and he thus lost his second opportunity for wider peer recognition and for driving the acceptance of the glacial theory. Only in 1874, 26 years after his arrival in the USA and a year after Agassiz’s death, did Guyot open his boxes of alpine rock specimens and display his unpublished map in the Museum of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), where he was engaged as a professor. In 1883, at age 77, his memory of the unpublished 1838 report on glaciers was still in his conscience which finally pushed him to submit it for printing at Neuchâtel. It passed largely unnoticed, however, and Guyot died one year later without recognition attached to his name for his original, innovative work. This paper reviews Guyot’s work and analyses his relationship with Agassiz while both were working in Neuchâtel. It seeks to evaluate his pioneering work on glaciers and on erratic blocks. It includes a copy of Guyot’s map of the erratic basins of Switzerland, kept to this day in the archives of Princeton University.

ABSTRACT Three new pieces of evidence concerning James Croll, the nineteenth century Scottish autodidact and climate change pioneer are revealed. These untold facets became apparent as a result of pursuing evidence further than might have seemed warranted, and comprise: (1) Croll’s short-lived attempt to become a publisher; (2) appointment to a janitorial position at Anderson’s University and Museum in Glasgow a year later than claimed by himself and repeated by subsequent commentators; (3) the enigma of why letters from Joseph Dalton Hooker to Croll were copied onto notepaper headed Montreal Cottage in Perth, Scotland (the town in which Croll lived), and the identification of John Bower, a retired fleet-surgeon and friend of Croll, as the copyist. It is argued that the findings were hidden in plain sight, are not trivial, and shed light on the biography of a relatively neglected individual.